I hate James Potter
by smilelaughread
Summary: Lily hates everything about James, and feels the need to tell everyone within earshot at every opportunity. Well, she does... hate him, that is. Wait, does she? Written for the "You have only 24 hours" competition.


**Your character is Lily Potter nee Evans**

**Your prompts are Claustrophobia, Divination and ditzy.**

**This was written for the "You have only 24 hours!" challenge at the HPFC forum!**

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><p>James Potter was an absolute prick. Lily had decided on that ten minutes after talking to him for the first time. It didn't help that he refused to actually <em>talk<em> to her during the following years, rather than play silly pranks and jokes on her. It definitely didn't help that he had decided that he was in love with her in second year, and that he had tried all manner of annoying things in order to attract her attention.

For example there was that time in _Divination, _where he had distracted her for the entire lesson. He had sent over little pieces of parchment folded with a spell into little hearts and cupids with arrows and cute baby dimples. It _had_ been Valentine's day, but it had been back in third year, when she didn't care for those things. Not-not that she did now...

Everyone who knew Lily knew not to even get her started on James Potter and his unfortunate habit of locking her in tiny spaces. She could go on for hours and hours about that particular subject, and she had gone through it so many times that it was practically the same speech every time. She always began with that sentence that let everyone else know that she was about to start. It also gave them a warning, and a moment's notice to make an excuse and leave. Those unfortunate enough to sit through "the speech" once rarely ever did again, and it was thanks to that first sentence that now, she hardly even had anyone to talk to.

That wasn't to say that all she ever talked about was James Potter, though.

_"James Potter is an honest to Merlin, dumber-than-dirt, good-for-nothing little prat whose only objective in life is to embarass him and his friends and to make himself look like an even bigger idiot than he is!"_

She always talked about the way he was constantly sweeping hair out of his eyes.

_"For goodness sakes, is it utterly impossible to get a haircut? Why doesn't he go and get some clips to put in his hair if he insists on having it down to his shoulders?"_

Then came the memories.

"_Do you remember the time he nearly set my hair on fire? I was furious, and all McGonagall did was make him apologize. I didn't want an apology, I wanted my hair back! Well, it wasn't burnt, but the ends were singed and I had to chop most of it off! And then, do you remember how he distracted me on that important practical exam we were having in Charms? He made me turn my flower into a paper pig! It was supposed to be a real, living, breathing __swan!__ He always does that, makes me lose focus when it's most important! God, I hate him!"_

That was when most people realized she was going to keep them for a while. They almost always had that frightened half-crazed look in their eyes as they desperately tried to get away. Lily always continued with her stories. Those around them cringed in sympathy for the poor soul who had gotten trapped in her clutches.

The worst recounts were about small spaces, as Lily always got a little… too excited.

"_If he would just talk to me like a normal human being instead of making a fool of himself every day without fail, he would know that I'm __claustrophobic__! He once trapped me in that little broom closet on the fourth floor. No one is ever in that part of the corridors on the fourth floor! He left me in there… for… two hours. I was ready to pull my hair out. He was amused – imagine that, amused! – when he let me out and I was mad. He told me I was overreacting. Overreacting, my arse! He had stranded me in that tiny space with no exit for a long period of time!"_

Some of her more compassionate victims tried to comfort her as she burst into tears at this.

"_And… and then he made me sit there in Slughorn's storage room for so long. I couldn't get out, nor could I scream. I would have gotten in so much trouble had I been found in his stores. That blasted James Potter gets on my last nerve! He was laughing his face off when he finally let me out, and I could have killed him right there!"_

Lily always said that sentence, and the people who had gone through this knew that it was a sort of test. If the one listening asked "so why didn't you kill him", Lily would continue speaking. If they said nothing, she might – on rare and beautiful occasions – let them go.

"_Well then, Lily, why didn't you kill him right then and there?"_

"_If I had been able to, I would have! He had his latest girlfriend dangling off his arm like some-like some dangly toy! She looked like a fish, opening and closing her mouth in shock as I practically fell out of the closet, gasping for breath. But-but then she told him off for locking me in there, so I decided that she wasn't the airhead she appeared to me, and that she had just made a small mistake in that she had agreed to go out with Potter. Not quite an airhead, I would say just a bit ditzy, like that __Xenophilius__ fellow I read about in the paper once."_

At this point, her ramble would be coming to an end, and she would be able to see the relief in her listening partner's face.

"_So yeah, James had better stop being so annoying. You know, he's only acting so silly to try and attract my attention. It is most definitely never going to happen, you know?"_

Except it had.

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><p><strong>So here it is, I hope it was alright and that you all enjoyed it. Review?<strong>


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